Web Development Sees ‘Marketing Renaissance’

And as neat as all of this new spending is, it could also mark the beginning of a whole new market crash if people don’t stop to look at the bigger, monitizing picture.

After a few post-bubble years of minimal spending for Web site maintenance, more companies are now looking to spend money on major Web development projects.

This trend, noted by Piper Jaffray senior research analyst Safa Rashtchy in a research note this week, should benefit interactive agencies and Web development shops, as well as service providers like Web analytics vendors, he said.

“Many of the agencies we talked to indicated they are seeing an acceleration in the demand for Web development services with several agencies noting a significant up tick in RFPs over the previous month,” Rashtchy wrote in the latest Silk Road report. “Additionally, our discussions indicated that that billing rates and the size of Web builds/redesigns are increasing as clients are now willing to spend more on Web site development.”

One of the key factors driving upgrade plans is the demand for more interactive sites to serve the growing broadband-enabled population of Web users. Many companies are also looking to optimize their Web sites to get the most out of growing online ad costs, and to coordinate marketing messages across media, he said.

According to executives at aQuantive’s Avenue A/Razorfish and Digitas’ Modem Media, the trend began in earnest last year, and has continued to grow in the early months of 2006. Last year, more than three-quarters of Avenue A/Razorfish’s clients were involved in a “major overhaul,” instead of a “facelift,” Martin Reidy, president of Modem Media, told ClickZ News.

He calls this movement a “Marketing Renaissance,” a rebirth of the importance of marketing online and the recognition that the Web site is a powerful tool for a company’s brand… Source: ClickZ News

[tags]web development,web site maintenance,agencies[/tags]